I'm sure that Kathy Griffin thought she'd get high fives from her friends at CNN for this stunt, and she probably did. But in this post-comedy age, you never know what's going to get you fired, even if you're a member in good standing of the racist Left.

On publication day of my memoir of Richard Nixon’s White House, President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. Instantly, the media cried “Nixonian,” comparing it to the 1973 Saturday Night Massacre.

Yet, the differences are stark.

The resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General Bill Ruckelshaus and the firing of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox came in the middle of an East-West crisis.

On Oct. 6, 1973, the high holy day of Yom Kippur, in a surprise attack, Egyptian troops crossed the Suez Canal and breached Israel’s Bar Lev Line. Syria attacked on the Golan Heights.

Within days, 1,000 Israeli soldiers were dead, hundreds of tanks destroyed, dozens of planes downed by Soviet surface-to-air missiles. As Egypt’s army broke through in the Sinai, there came reports that Moshe Dayan was arming Israeli F-4s with nuclear weapons.

“This is the end of the Third Temple,” Dayan was quoted.

Nixon ordered every U.S. transport that could fly to deliver tanks and planes to Israel. Gen. Ariel Sharon crossed the Canal to the west and rolled north to cut off and kill the Egyptian 3rd army in Sinai.

The Gulf Arabs declared an oil embargo of the United States.
We got reports that nuclear-capable Russian ships were moving through the Dardanelles and Soviet airborne divisions were moving to airfields. U.S. nuclear forces were put on heightened alert.

It was in this environment, with Henry Kissinger in Moscow trying to negotiate a ceasefire in the Mideast, that Cox refused to accept a compromise deal that would give him verified summaries of Nixon’s tapes, but not actual tapes. Democrat Senators Sam Ervin and John Stennis had accepted this compromise, as had Richardson, or so we believed.

Nixon had no choice. As he told me, he could not, in this Cold War crisis, have Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev see him back down in the face of defiance by one of his own Cabinet appointees.

If he had to, Nixon told me, he would reach down to a GS-7 at Justice to fire Cox: “We can’t have that viper sleeping in the bed with us.”

That Saturday night, I told friends, next week will bring resolutions of impeachment in the House. And so it did.

How do Nixon and Trump’s actions differ?

Where Nixon decapitated his Justice Department and shut down the special prosecutor’s office, Trump simply fired an FBI director who agreed that Trump had every right to do so.

By October 1973, with two dozen Nixon White House, Cabinet and campaign officers convicted or facing indictment and trial, we were steeped in the worst political scandal in U.S. history.

Nothing comparable exists today.

But if President Trump is enraged, he has every right to be.

Since July, the FBI has been investigating alleged Trump campaign collusion with Putin’s Russia to hack the DNC and John Podesta’s email accounts — and produced zilch. As of January, ex-CIA Director Mike Morell and ex-DNI James Clapper said no collusion had been found.

Yet every day we hear Democrats and the media bray about a Putin-Trump connection and Russian “control” of the president.

In the early 1950s, they had a term for this. It was called McCarthyism, and its greatest practitioners invariably turned out to be those who had invented the term.

“Justice delayed is justice denied!” applies to presidents, too.

Trump has been under a cloud of a “Russian connection” to him and his campaign for nearly a year. Yet no hard evidence of Trump-Russia collusion in the election has been produced.

Is not the endless airing of unproven allegations inherently un-American?

In 1973, NBC’s John Chancellor suggested the ouster of Richardson, Ruckelshaus and Cox was the “most serious constitutional crisis” in U.S. history, passing over the secession of 11 Southern states and a Civil War that cost 620,000 lives. One London reporter said that “the whiff of the Gestapo was in the clear October air.”

We see a similar hysteria rising today.

Yet that was not a constitutional crisis then, and the mandated early retirement of Jim Comey is not a constitutional crisis now.

And that the mainstream media are equating “Russia-gate” and Watergate tells you what is afoot.

Trump is hated by this city, which gave him 4 percent of its votes, as much as Nixon was. And the deep-state determination to bring him down is as great as it was with Nixon.

By 1968, the liberal establishment had lost the mandate it had held since 1933, but not lost its ability to wound and kill presidents.

Though Nixon won 49 states, that establishment took him down. Though Ronald Reagan won 49 states, that establishment almost took him down in the Iran-Contra affair.

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

GREENVILLE, Texas -- An investigation is underway after a shooting killed three people at a Nissan dealership Tuesday.

N.S.: Two bounty hunters waited, among employees, customers, and the latter's children, to effect the arrest of a fugitive who was expected to show up at a Nissan dealership. And show up, he did. But he was not about to surrender. In the firefight that ensued, the fugitive killed both bounty hunters, but they got their man before dying.

Asdrubal Cabnrera's error evoked memories of a similar error by Luis Castillo in the bottom of the ninth inning years ago, at Yankee Stadium, that cost the Mets a game that they otherwise would have wrapped up.

The game is still tied, 4-4, with two outs in the top of the ninth, at Corporate Field in Flushing.

N.S.: “Restorative justice” claims to seek justice, but there’s no justice in it. I think tht what it’s really about is treating the blacks and Hispanics who commit the overwhelming majority of crimes in and out of schools as if they were the victims, rather than the perps.

DALY CITY, Calif.—On Tuesday, AFT Secretary-Treasurer Lorretta Johnson will join with educators, students, parents, anti-bullying activists and community members in Daly City for an honest and eye-opening conversation on school discipline practices, restorative justice and equity in public education. Her visit comes on the heels of a one-year AFT Innovation Fund grant to two Daly City AFT locals to create a corridor of three community schools in their two school districts. The Jefferson Elementary Federation of Teachers represents educators in the Jefferson Elementary School District, and the Jefferson Federation of Teachers represents educators in the Jefferson Union High School District.

Johnson’s visit to the Bay Area is part of the AFT’s work to create a fairer and more just learning and working environment for students, their families and educators. Not too long ago, the AFT became the first public sector and international union in modern history to issue a substantive, action-oriented report on achieving racial equity in America. The report provided a framework for the development of policy in national and state legislation at the school board level and inside the AFT itself.

During her two-day swing through Daly City, Johnson will highlight the effectiveness of restorative justice and positive behavioral interventions and supports, and will also highlight the benefits these programs have had for Daly City students, parents and the entire community.

In addition to joining the conversation with community members, Johnson will also tour a couple schools and will meet with educators, parents, elected leaders and community officials.

The American Federation of Teachers is a union of 1.6 million professionals that champions fairness; democracy; economic opportunity; and high-quality public education, healthcare and public services for our students, their families and our communities. We are committed to advancing these principles through community engagement, organizing, collective bargaining and political activism, and especially through the work our members do.

Saving Private Ryan Soundtrack composed by John Williams, performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Somber music for a somber movie.

John Williams is God’s gift to the movies.

When Aaron Copland (1900-1990) composed music for a movie, he would not only write stunning music, but lots of it, so that a picture like The Red Pony might contain over a solid hour of music, very little of it repeat themes. He took twice as long writing a score as the typical composer, and he demanded and got a much higher fee—and he earned every bit of it. The opening theme alone to The Red Pony is so stunning that when my 10-year-old son and I saw the picture for the first time last summer, and the opening credits cited Copland, my son said, without prompting, “Thank you, Aaron.”

Although there is a fair amount of repetition in this score, it still blows me away how many great individual themes John Williams wrote for one picture, and how powerful they are, not just the requiem. We Stix men feel the same way about seeing John Williams’ name in the credits as we do about Aaron Copland.

With heartfelt thanks to Ellijah De Leon, who uploaded all of what follows.

When I was a wee lad, a couple times a year my mom would call a taxi, and send me and my big sister down to Long Beach’s West End, to visit our Aunt Rose.

The West End was close to 100% Catholic, and overwhelmingly Irish, and yet Aunt Rose had lived there seemingly forever. When we were kids, she still had the sign out front that she was a realtor, though she probably hadn’t done any work for years.

Aunt Rose always served us home-made fish cakes—the world’s worst! They tasted as if she’d breaded them with sawdust.

In the back of the first floor—the only floor I ever saw—Aunt Rose had an old-fashioned sink with two faucets, on opposite sides. The left faucet got you scalding hot water, and the right one got you ice-cold water.

By then, Aunt Rose was severely stooped, stood something like 4’8,” and shuffled around the house unsteadily.

Aside from the TV, a big, old black & white set that was surely a Zenith (Aunt Rose was a fan of the show, Millionaire), the parlor was unofficially the Howard K. Goodman Memorial Museum.

Aunt Rose had given a photograph of Howard in his dress uniform to a painter, whose portrait dominated the room.

On the mantle below the portrait, were Howard’s medals in little boxes. There were at least two, of which I recall only the Purple Heart. The other one must have been his Silver Star.

What a terrible thing, to lose one’s only child in The War.

Nana had told me about how respected Gold Star Mothers were.

Nana, Aunt Rose’s kid sister, had three children, two of whom survived military service. Aunt Ruth (1921-2016), made it to lieutenant in the WACs, and Uncle Irwin (1924-1992) made it to sergeant in the Army and fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and then went back for seconds in the Korean War.

Aunt Ruth became an elementary school teacher in Bellmore, New York, while Uncle Irwin worked largely as a college reference librarian in Atlanta.

During Aunt Rose’s latter years, when she and Nana were the last of 14 siblings, all born in Hungary, circa 1873-1893, they would speak on the phone every morning, and every conversation would end with the sisters shouting, “Oh, Rose!,” “Oh, Fan (Fanny)!,” and simultaneously slamming down the phone.

For one of Aunt Rose’s last birthdays, one of the relatives took us all to a fancy Jewish restaurant on the (Long) Island somewhere. All I remember is us sitting at a long row of tables that the staff had pushed together, and everyone starting off with matzo ball soup, which I hated.

Aunt Rose died around 1966, in her early eighties; around the time I turned eight.

Only in 2012 did I learn that Aunt Rose had in fact had three children. She just organized her home, as if Howard had been her only child!

My cousin Howard explained things to me in 2012, when we met at our cousin Philip’s funeral. (Philip was only 55, and while he’d been a skinny kid, he had long been morbidly obese.)

We traveled together afterwards on the LIRR. It seems that Aunt Rose had two daughters, Ruth and Alma, of whom Ruth was Howard’s mother. (Howard Passel was born a few months after the Jap sniper killed Howard Goodman, and Ruth thus named her child after her brother.)

But of course! I’d met Ruth and Alma and their respective husbands many times, when they came to visit Nana, but never made the connection.

If memory serves, Ruth and Alma both became schoolteachers, a common trade for smart Jewish girls, before they discovered that they could become rich as shysters through extortionary lawsuits.

Although I recall Ruth’s husband, I can’t recall his name (Ben?). I’ll rectify that omission later. Alma married Raymond Kaplow (1909-1983), who had made it to at least captain in the Army Medical Corps, and who would become a celebrated orthopedic surgeon.

The West End has always been full of Irish saloons, which is where Howard Goodman would have learned all those Irish songs. He was admitted to the New York Bar about a month before he shipped off, so I doubt that he ever worked as a lawyer.

Then there was “Barney O'Goodman.” The records list him as “Captain Howard K. Goodman, a New York lawyer, but they called him Barney O'Goodman because he could sing more Irish songs than any man in the regiment. They called him ‘Bugle Boy,’ too, because he blew his company's calls in camp. It was the only company in the Marine Corps with a captain for a bugler. It was pretty much a company secret."++

Awarded a Silver Star for heroism on Guadalcanal. He was killed on Cape Gloucester because he exposed himself to spot the enemy rather than order one of his men to do it.++

At Butch's Saloon, the bar that is practically a character in BYOL. From left to right: Harold Russell, Teresa Wright, Dana Andrews, Myrna Loy, Freddie March and standing, bow-tied but cut off, behind Loy and March, Hoagy Carmichael.

Cinematography by the greatest cameraman of his generation, who gave the world deep-focus photography, which played a pivotal role (Gregg Toland)? Check.

A screen adaptation of a powerful, 268-page poem, Glory for Me, by one of the America’s greatest writers (MacKinlay Kantor), adapted by another of America’s greatest writers, (Robert E. Sherwood)? Check.

One of the greatest original scores ever composed for a picture (Hugo Friedhofer)? Check.

Great dialogue, including one of the greatest speeches ever written for a movie? Check.

If I sound like a DVD salesman, I am, but I’m not working for a commission. If America hadn’t been infected by the toxin of racial socialism, there’d be no need for me to promote BYOL, because every school child in American would already have seen it in elementary school.

But you don’t even have to order BYOL, though I recommend that you buy both the DVD of the picture, and the CD of its score, both of which we purchased a few years ago for the Stix Family library. Turner Classic Movies is presenting the picture tonight, at 10:15 p.m., as part of its Memorial Day Marathon—34 pictures, spanning 72 hours.

Some movies seem like masterpieces the first time you see them—Woody Allen’s Zelig hit me that way—but their impact fades with repeated viewings. Others, however, become more powerful with time. That’s the way it is with masterpieces. True Grit has had that effect on me over the years, since seeing it during its first run.

I knew that BYOL was a masterpiece the first time I saw it, in an Upper West Side Manhattan revival house (which I’m sure is long gone). The last surviving cast member, Teresa Wright, spoke to the audience. (I can’t, for the life of me, recall the year; must’ve been the mid-to-late 1980s.)

Since then, I’ve seen it three or four more times, to where I can say the lines ahead of the players. And I’m not the only one in this house that can do that.

And so, BYOL has climbed the charts of my top movies. First, Kane ruled the roost alone. Then, it was Kane, the Godfather, and The Godfather, Part II. And now, it’s the Big Four. However, I give BYOL a slight edge, due to its emotional power. I suppose, from a rigorous arithmetical standpoint, BYOL should reign alone at number one, with the other three pictures tied for number two, but I’m not ready to do that. Thus, here is my current Top Ten:

1. (Tied) The Best Years of Our Lives
1. Citizen Kane
1. The Godfather
1. The Godfather, Part II
5. It’s a Wonderful Life
6. Shane
7. It Happened One Night
8. On the Waterfront
9. (Tied) The Bridge on the River Kwai
9. (Tied) Lawrence of Arabia

At Butch's Saloon, the bar that is practically a character in BYOL. From left to right: Harold Russell, Teresa Wright, Dana Andrews, Myrna Loy, Freddie March and standing, bow-tied but cut off, behind Loy and March, Hoagy Carmichael.

If a more powerful picture than The Best Years of Our Lives has ever been made that doesn’t have The Godfather or Kane in its name, I haven’t seen it.

The idea for the picture came from producer Samuel Goldwyn’s wife, Frances, who had read an article in 1944 about the problems some veterans were having, returning to civilian life in the Midwest. Goldwyn commissioned Iowan Mac Kinlay Kantor (here and here), who had served in the Army Air Force to write a script, and Kantor duly headed to a cabin in the country with a few cases of scotch, only to return a few weeks later with a … poem!? It was published in 1945 with the subtitle “A Novel” on the cover, but it’s a 268-page, narrative poem entitled Glory for Me that opens,

Fred Derry, twenty-one, and killer of a hundred men….

And a powerful poem it is, but Sam Goldwyn was not amused. He had to hire a second screenwriter, the legendary Robert E. Sherwood, winner of four Pulitzer Prizes, to translate and shape Kantor’s poem into screen prose. Sherwood worked his magic, but Kantor must share the credit, if not the Oscar. The picture won eight Oscars in all, and deserved every one of them.

Because Goldwyn had engaged Freddie March to star, the focus of the story was shifted away from Fred to Al, while Homer’s affliction was changed from spasticity to having had his hands burned off in a battle. (And a good thing, too. Homer’s spasticity in the poem is just too heartbreaking to take.) And yet, running at two hours and 50 minutes, each character has enough screen time to merit Best Actor consideration.

“The Homecoming”

The After-Dinner Speech: Fredric March as Al Stephenson

March imbues banker Al Stephenson with his signature mix of tragedy and comedy. Nobody played a comical drunk better than March, and Al Stephenson is a drunk. A functioning, jovial drunk, but a drunk, nonetheless. He loves his family, but hates his boss at the bank, Mr. Milton (Ray Collins), “the old hypocrite.”

Ray Collins as Mr. Milton, “the old hypocrite”

I don’t know of any harder scripting task than writing a good speech. Can’t be too short or too long. Can’t be too melodramatic. Sherwood gives March’s drunken Al Stephenson an oft-times hilarious speech as the guest of honor at a dinner held by his boss, to celebrate his return and promotion, in which Al goes from the heights of his career to almost talking himself out of a job. It’s a real tightrope act, but March pulls it off, with subtle assistance from Loy.

March uses some stage business as subtle punctuation to the misery Al feels in his work life. Anytime he deals with Mr. Milton or some other intolerable situation, he must have a drink or a cigarette in his hands. His creeping problem is that he increasingly also needs a drink in his hand, even when he’s in a happy situation.

“Elevator / Boone City / Peggy”

Although Al is upper-middle-class, he served as a sergeant in the infantry, which permits March to embody the other characteristic that his best roles always exemplified: The aristocrat with the common touch, as he shows off particularly in his speech, and in a confrontation with Fred.

Speaking of Fred, Dana Andrews’ role as the poor kid who made it to bombardier captain in the Army Air Force, a tortured hero who saw his buddies die in front of his eyes on a burning bomber, permitted him to display his unique blend of easy masculinity and doubt-ridden vulnerability that he’d established in 1944’s Laura.

Andrews had a role big enough to qualify for a Best Actor nomination, along with March, and gave one of a handful of the greatest supporting actor performances ever, up there with Karl Malden in On the Waterfront, and Walter Brennan reading from the telephone book.

This was Andrews’ Oscar, but it was not to be.

“Fred & Peggy”

The Academy wanted to do something for veterans that year. Harold Russell was not only a veteran, but one who’d had both of his hands burned off in an accident. It would have all been fine, if the Academy had simply given Russell the honorary Oscar that it ultimately bestowed on him. But they couldn’t leave well enough alone, and the powers that be not only gave Harold Russell an honorary Oscar, but nominated him for the official Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, as well. And who was going to stand in his way? Not that year.

The citation for Russell’s honorary Oscar reads, “For bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans through his appearance in The Best Years of Our Lives.”

Don’t get me wrong; Russell gave an excellent performance by professional standards; never mind that he was a “civilian.” He was particularly good in his scenes with Dana Andrews. But Andrews gave a performance for the ages.

And that was it for him.

“The Nightmare”

As Al’s daughter, Peggy, Teresa Wright’s insistent performance can be annoying at times, and yet, even it works, because she is paired with Myrna Loy, whose light touch is the perfect counterpoint as her mother, Millie.

“Neighbors / Wilma / Homer's Anger”

This was one of the last pictures that Gregg Toland photographed. His legendary “deep focus” technique of filming a scene on a sharp angle, in order to clearly show the action both in the foreground and background, was put to its best use in the saloon scene, where Al, Homer, and Uncle Butch are in the foreground, but the real action is in the background, as Fred makes a fateful call from the telephone booth at the other end of the bar, a call whose content only Al knows.

Gregg Toland's deep focus shot at Butch's Saloon

Director William Wyler wanted Aaron Copland* to score the picture, but Copland was busy with other projects for the foreseeable future, and so Wyler instead engaged Hugo Friedhofer.

“Fred Asleep”

Friedhofer wrote a bold, ambitious score, but also gave the picture a distinctly Coplandian flavor. (It is impossible to overstate Copland’s influence on American movie music. Even Spike Lee has used his work.) He took an uptempo theme on the speeded-up nature of town life from Copland’s score to the 1937 ballet, Billy the Kid, slowed it down, and made it lush with strings, as the leitmotif of Homer’s longsuffering girlfriend from next-door, Wilma, in expressing her romantic and domestic yearnings.

An earlier musical passage, “The Homecoming,” depicts the emotions felt by the three protagonists, Al Stephenson (Fredric March), Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), and Homer Parrish (Harold Russell) as they ride home in a supply plane. First, during the night while the other men asleep, Homer is filled with foreboding (this passage could be called “Homer’s Theme”). In the morning, the tempo and the men’s (even Homer’s) spirits pick up, as they see the old landscape of Boone City, and having once landed and sharing a taxi, they hit their old hometown, after four years off fighting the war. First comes the thrill of watching city life—their city, with pretty American girls walking down the street all dolled up—and yet, it’s like they’re seeing it for the first time. Then comes the foreboding each man feels as he nears his family home, after having been away for so long. Has the world back home passed them by?

Finally, comes the scene at the airplane graveyard, thanks to Friedhofer, Toland, and Andrews, the most powerful scene in the entire picture. That scene comes early in Glory for Me, but Sherwood wisely moved it towards the end, and juxtaposes it with Fred’s father finding the medals and citations for bravery, including the Distinguished Flying Cross—just short of the Medal of Honor—that the humble Fred had not so much as mentioned to him and his stepmother.

Aircraft graveyard scene: Capt. Fred Derry (Dana Andrews) in the cockpit of a B-17 Flying Fortress, on its way to be scrapped

“The Citation / Graveyard & Bomber”

Because the picture was made immediately after war’s end, Sherwood and Wyler were able to freshly capture the mood of the nation, and at the same time, certain ephemeral physical conditions, e.g., aircraft graveyards were available that would soon be gone. Note that at the time Hollywood, which had many performers in uniform, and more than a few who'd actually seen combat, was not the enemy of the people that it has since become.

“End Title & End Cast” (Wilma’s Theme)

The Best Years of Our Lives was nominated for eight competitive Academy Awards, of which it won seven, plus Harold Russell’s honorary Oscar. The title is ironic, and comes from a speech in which Fred’s floozy of a wife (Virginia Mayo) complains that she gave up “the best years of my life” for him while he was off fighting in the war. (Not that the slut gave up a thing!) The double irony is that the title became an iconic phrase, due to its connection to the picture, yet shorn of its ironic origins. Over the next 20-odd years, it became standard usage in the vernacular to speak of veterans as having sacrificed “the best years of their lives.”

[*It’s a blessing that Hugo Friedhofer scored the picture, rather than Aaron Copland. Wyler hated classical composers, and made their lives miserable. Three years later, he would hire Copland to score The Heiress.

Critics have lauded Copland for pioneering a new way in that movie to score women’s pictures, but Wyler would butcher Copland’s score, mashing it up with incompatible music he had a second composer write. Nevertheless, the Academy would award Copland his only Oscar for The Heiress.

Communists have since maintained that Copland, who was a communist (but not a Party member), was blacklisted by Hollywood, but that’s just another blacklisting myth. It was Willi Wyler who drove Aaron Copland out of Hollywood!

In 1958, Wyler did it again. He hired classical composer Jerome Moross to score his epic Western, The Big Country. Moross composed one of the greatest scores for any movie. The tin-eared Wyler hated it, and decided to scrap it. It was only the intervention of star and co-producer Gregory Peck that saved Moross’ masterpiece of a score.

**In the past, I have posted a video of the scene of Fred Derry at the airplane graveyard. Since then, the heirs of Samuel Goldwyn have foolishly and pettily sicced the Kopyright Kops on Youtube, and forced it to take down the video.

Samuel Goldwyn’s greedy heirs’ act will not earn them one penny more. If anything, it will cost them royalties, as thousands of people who would have seen the scene and heard the music, and thereby been inspired to buy the DVD, will now never buy it. Good job!]

Steve Bannon is one of the few aides loyal to Trump; Sean Spicer appears to be a Trump loyalist, too.

If the rumors are true, such a move will only hurt POTUS. He needs to get rid of McMaster, Priebus, and other Party hacks, and Ivanka and her wife, but it doesn't look as though he will. He certainly isn't going to send his pushy, liberal daughter to the corner.

It’s not easy to stand in the shoes of a police officer in immediate danger. But an Oklahoma jury proved it was up to the task. Last Wednesday evening, following nine hours of deliberation, jurors acquitted Tulsa Police Officer Betty Shelby of first-degree manslaughter in the death last September of a PCP-fueled black male suspect, Terence Crutcher. That confrontation, caught on video, gained national attention following accusations that Shelby, who is white, was racially motivated. Yet evidence indicates that any cop, regardless of race, would have acted similarly. That hasn’t dissuaded “civil rights” brigades, from Al Sharpton to Black Lives Matter activists to Crutcher family members themselves, from insisting that a hate crime and cover-up were committed. Their accusations have no basis in fact.

National Legal and Policy Center described this incident and its context early last October, along with a similar one occurring during that time in Charlotte. Each incident involved a police officer fatally shooting an unruly black crime suspect. Though the cop in the Charlotte case was black, that made no difference to radical anti-white activists, such as Reverend Al Sharpton, or to the hundreds of blacks who rioted for three straight nights in that city’s downtown area. Sharpton had called for an investigation in that case, but otherwise was not materially involved. By contrast, he was materially involved in Tulsa, coaxing his friend, Benjamin Crump (in center of photo, flanked by Sharpton) to serve on the Crutcher family legal team.

Benjamin Crump, operator of a Tallahassee, Fla. boutique law firm with his partner, Daryl Parks, is a piece of work. He’s the most recent addition to the parade of lawyers over the decades recruited by Al Sharpton to represent aggrieved black families. And like his predecessors (to say nothing of Sharpton himself), he has a penchant for making wild, inflammatory accusations. His profile sharply rose several years ago when he represented the families of two deceased black teenagers, Trayvon Martin and Kendrick Johnson. Crump very loudly had insisted that each had been murdered and that police hid key evidence. This was nonsense. Trayvon Martin, without provocation, had assaulted a white neighborhood anti-crime patrol volunteer in Sanford, Fla., and might well have killed him were it not for the would-be victim, George Zimmerman, using his licensed handgun in self-defense. Zimmerman eventually would be found not guilty of murder and manslaughter by a state jury in July 2013. Kendrick Johnson, a high school student in Valdosta, Ga., died in a freak accident in his high school gym in January 2013. There was not a shred of evidence, contrary to the pumped-up assertions of Crump and Johnson’s parents, that a white classmate had murdered him or that police had orchestrated a cover-up. Last June, federal prosecutors, after a seemingly endless discovery process, announced they would not file any criminal charges.

Al Sharpton and Benjamin Crump, ever the racial politicians, weren’t about to let go of their Tulsa campaign. For months, they have been citing the death of Terence Crutcher as yet another manifestation of official white racism. Yet they had an ally in Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler, who a mere six days after the incident charged a white cop on the scene, Betty Shelby, with first-degree manslaughter. Flanked by Crump and members of the Crutcher family, Sharpton held a press conference from his Harlem-based nonprofit group, National Action Network, to declare that prosecuting Shelby was merely a good start:

The first-degree manslaughter charges against this officer are a swift step in the right direction as we pursue justice in the death of Terence Crutcher. But we also look forward to a further investigation of all officers at the scene when this tragedy occurred and we are anxious to know whether the conduct of these other officers will be subject to disciplinary actions or legal proceedings.

Don’t try and smear this young man in death as you smeared his blood on that highway. We demand immediate justice! There ought to be an immediate trial, and an immediate trying of the evidence, and stop the judicial stalling. Because justice delayed is justice denied.

The Reverend Al and his Benjamin Crump were convinced this was a wanton killing and cover-up. They pointed to police helicopter video footage ostensibly backing up their claim. Crump, though not a prosecutor, would prove invaluable to the Crutcher family, instructing them to cooperate as little as possible with investigators. As befits a Sharpton ally, he saw this incident as a white-on-black “hate” crime. The full range of facts point to a much different conclusion.

Terence Crutcher led a troubled life. Since the mid-Nineties, the 40-year-old Tulsa native, a father of four, had amassed a long string of convictions for offenses that included petty larceny, driving with a suspended license, resisting arrest, drug trafficking and public intoxication. By the end of last August, he had three outstanding arrest warrants for drug trafficking, public intoxication and resisting a police officer. Part of the problem lay in his chronic use of drugs, especially PCP, a hallucinogen capable of inducing severe and dangerous changes in behavior. Clinical descriptions of its influence bear a strong resemblance to Crutcher’s behavior during the last minutes of his life. That also was the opinion of Officer Betty Shelby, who was trained to recognize the warning signs of PCP use.

A little after 7:30 P.M. on Friday, September 16, Tulsa police received a pair of “911” calls about an abandoned Lincoln Navigator idling in the middle of 36th Street North just west of Lewis Avenue. The doors were wide open. And the black driver, Terence Crutcher, had gotten out of the vehicle and was making a scene. Here’s how one caller described it: “It’s an SUV. It’s like in the middle of the street. It’s blocking traffic. There was a guy running from it, saying it was going to blow up. But I think he’s smoking something. I got out and was like, ‘Do you need help?’ He was like, ‘Come here, I think it’s going to blow up.’” The other caller similarly stated: “There is a car that looks like somebody just jumped out of it and left it in the center of the road on 36th Street North and North Lewis Avenue…The driver-side door is open like somebody jumped out. It’s on the yellow line, blocking traffic. Nobody in the car.” The police dispatcher was justified in calling a squad car to the scene. This was a matter of public safety.

Two cops arrived. One was Betty Jo Shelby. She actually had been on her way to a separate, domestic violence-related call, but along the way encountered Crutcher standing near his car. The second officer to arrive was Tyler Turnbough. Shortly after, a police helicopter arrived and hovered over the scene, recording video footage. At least one police vehicle dashcam also was operating. Shelby pulled her cruiser over, stopped and got out. She then asked Crutcher, “Hey, is this your car?” Crutcher did not respond, and instead drooped his head and placed his hand in his left pocket. Officer Shelby responded: “Hey, please keep your hands out of your pocket while you’re talking to me. Let’s deal with this car.” Once again, Crutcher did not respond. And once again, Shelby ordered him to get his hands out of his pocket. This time he complied. He then raised his arms even though he was not under arrest.

Officer Shelby again tried to coax Crutcher into talking. The suspect responded only with a stare and some unintelligible words, and then walked to the edge of the road. He then turned to look at her, his hands still in the air, and then put his hands down and began reaching into his pocket again. Shelby once more ordered him to get his hands out of his pockets. It was at this point, said her lawyer, that she suspected he was high “on something,” likely PCP. She radioed the dispatcher and said that she had a suspect “who is not following commands.” Believing Crutcher had a gun, she pulled out her service revolver and ordered him to drop to his knees. The suspect, rather than comply, walked toward his SUV with his hands up. Shelby and three other officers on the scene followed with weapons drawn.

This is where the confrontation turned lethal. According to the helicopter video, Crutcher headed toward his SUV with his hands still in the air. “As a police officer,” said Shelby’s attorney days later, “You have to wonder – why would someone ignore commands at gunpoint to get to a certain location?” Suddenly, Crutcher lowered his arms, turned to face the car, and reached into the driver’s side window with his left hand. At that moment, Officer Shelby fired her gun at Crutcher, hitting him in the chest. Barely a second later, Officer Turnbough used his Taser gun to further subdue the suspect. Crutcher was rushed by ambulance to a local hospital, but died later that evening. In a subsequent interview with homicide detectives, Shelby said that it appeared Crutcher was reaching into his car to retrieve a weapon. “I was never so scared in my life as in that moment right then,” she remarked. As it turned out, there was no weapon inside the vehicle. Yet more to the point, Shelby had good reason to believe there was a weapon.

The wheels of law and order would move quickly. On September 20, the Tulsa Police Department placed Officers Shelby and Turnbough on routine administrative leave, pending an investigation. And on September 22, Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler, perhaps fearing an outbreak of rioting by blacks of the sort engulfing Charlotte, charged Officer Shelby with first-degree manslaughter. The following morning, Shelby turned herself in to the county jail, where she was booked and released on a $50,000 bond. The feds also got into the act. On September 19, three days before the state charge, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it had opened a probe into possible violations of Crutcher’s civil rights. Local Black Lives Matter activists gathered at the county courthouse to demand prosecutions. And, of course, up in New York City, the Reverend Al was making his splashy statement, accompanied by members of the Crutcher family and their legal maestro, Benjamin Crump. These “civil rights” activists were convinced that this was a hate crime. Yet their campaign was as misguided and demagogic as earlier ones calling for the imprisonment of the “murderers” of Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown. Here are a few salient realities.

There was no apparent racial motive on Officer Betty Shelby’s part. While Sharpton and his allies have insisted from the start that Shelby had killed Terence Crutcher because he was black, there is no evidence of that. She did not exhibit any racial animus during the confrontation nor had she done so during previous encounters with criminal suspects. She shot Crutcher because she believed, rightly or wrongly, that her life was in danger. There was no evidence that she would have reacted differently had the suspect been white.

Terence Crutcher was high on PCP. There was no question that Crutcher had a long-term problem with PCP (formally known as phencyclidine, colloquially known as “angel dust”). Indeed, his own father had admitted as much in a 2012 police interview. Police lab tests following the shooting, in fact, showed that the interior of his vehicle contained a vial of PCP. And an autopsy revealed traces of the drug in his system. Most crucially, Crutcher’s behavior that fatal evening was consistent with the clinical literature on the effects of PCP. Short-term markers of its use include numbness, slurred or nonexistent speech, loss of motor coordination, a false sense of invincibility and generally erratic behavior. All this describes Terence Crutcher.

Officer Shelby’s behavior was not out of line with how other police would have behaved. A successful prosecution would have had to meet a high hurdle here. Back in 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Graham v. Connor that police officers who use force in an emergency situation must be judged according to the full range of circumstances leading up to the moment of its use. Any prosecution must meet a standard of “objective reasonableness.” The guiding question must be: Would a similarly trained officer in an identical set of circumstances have reacted the same way? Using that standard, there is ample reason to believe that Shelby, age 43, a 10-year veteran of the Tulsa police force, behaved in a manner consistent with that of other cops faced with such a situation. The suspect had behaved in a wildly erratic manner, repeatedly refusing to respond to her requests. Observing the suspect reaching into his vehicle, she had a justifiable fear that he was going for a gun with the intention of using it. It would be a stretch to believe that a cop, even a black one, would have spurned any possibility of using force at that moment.

The trial jury had to consider these and other factors. Officer Shelby’s fate was in their hands. If convicted, she faced anywhere from four years to life in prison. The defense had its work cut out. The prosecution, as one could have expected, made race an issue. Steve Kunzweiler, the district attorney, told jurors that “skin color is an issue in this case.” Moreover, Shelby’s emotional state came under scrutiny. During opening statements on May 10, Assistant District Attorney Kevin Gray depicted her as an overly emotional cop with an irrational fear of Crutcher that caused him to bleed out in the street for more than two minutes before someone came to his aid. A fellow officer, David Montgomery, appeared to corroborate this view in testimony for the prosecution. He stated that Shelby became overtly emotional while waiting for police investigators to take her weapon and photograph and had asked repeatedly: “Why wouldn’t he listen? Why wouldn’t he follow commands?” Moreover, prosecutors pointed out, citing video footage, that while Crutcher’s behavior was erratic, it was not combative and hence not an immediate threat to life.

Lead defense attorney Shannon McMurray presented an alternative scenario. First, she said, video footage provided only a partial picture. In the two minutes prior to its commencement, Officer Shelby repeatedly ordered Crutcher to stop walking away from her and drop to the ground. In other words, her use of force was not a spur-of-the-moment decision. Moreover, this was the first time in her entire decade on the force in which she had discharged her service weapon in the line of duty. And while Crutcher’s behavior was not overtly aggressive, there was reason to fear him notwithstanding. Not less than three people previously had called police earlier that day to report his erratic behavior, though Shelby was not aware of those reports at the time she encountered the suspect. Officer Tyler Turnbough, the cop who tasered Crutcher only seconds after the shooting, also testified, “It was obvious there was something that transpired before I arrived…The situation made me a little uneasy, a little edgy.” Defense Attorney McMurray also stated that prosecutors had misrepresented the testimony of one of her expert witnesses.

The 12 jurors, nine white and three black, deliberated for a little over nine hours, a clear sign they took the case seriously. On May 16, around 9:50 P.M., they walked into the courtroom and read the verdict: not guilty. While Officer Shelby may have erred in judgment, she did not commit a crime. Crutcher family members in the room reacted with shock and disgust. “Let it be known that I believe in my heart that Betty Shelby got away with murder,” declared Terence Crutcher’s father, Reverend Joey Crutcher. His twin sister, Tiffany, added that “a cover-up was exposed” during the trial, though she did not elaborate. Family members also insisted that Tulsa police had attempted to “demonize” him over drug possession – as if being high on angel dust had nothing to do with his behavior. Meanwhile, several dozen Black Lives Matter activists had gathered in a plaza outside the courthouse following the verdict, chanting: “No justice, no peace. No racist police.” Others sarcastically chanted, “Hands up! Don’t up!” The crowd eventually broke up a little after midnight.

Al Sharpton already had weighed in during a visit to downtown Tulsa at the invitation of the Crutcher family while the trial was in progress. Speaking at a nighttime rally on May 10, the Reverend Al told the crowd of about 300 at the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame: “We are in court in Tulsa about an unarmed man who was killed. That’s what the trial is about.” He asked the audience a question: “What is before this jury is this: “Is it legal for an unarmed man to be shot with his hands up?” And he added: “I came to pray. I came to rally. I came to mend broken hearts.” Reverend Rodney Goss, pastor of Morning Star Baptist Church, said before the rally that he was taking stand for justice. “I want justice to be justice,” Goss said. “We are not anti-police. We’re anti-injustice.”

The Reverend Al and his associates may accuse, shout, plea and cry all they wish, but there was no injustice done. Betty Shelby had good reason to believe that her life was in danger. She did not shoot Crutcher out of wanton motive, racially-related or not. Those who invoke the term “civil rights” so as to make it impossible for white cops to defend themselves are doing nobody any favors. A defendant in a criminal case, regardless of race, is entitled to a presumption of innocence. And the bar for a conviction remains “beyond a reasonable doubt.” It’s true that Officer Shelby might have avoided resorting to lethal force. Unlike the shooting deaths of, say, Patrick Dorismond, Sean Bell or Michael Brown (each hyped by Sharpton to extreme lengths), this was not a clear case of self-defense against a violent suspect. Notwithstanding, the verdict was the right one. As for Betty Shelby, she’s back on the job, though not on a patrol assignment.

The first of a two-part episode written by Edward J. Lakso and directed by Ted Post, with Vic Morrow, Richard Basehart, Jack Hogan, Pierre Jalbert, Tom Lowell, Dick Peabody, Conlan Carter, Simon Oakland, Woodrow Parfrey, Sasha Harden, Glenn Cannon, Arthur Batanides, James Sikking, Michael McDonald. Original air date: 8 October 1963.
N.S.: This is a classic episode of the series that is a short-list contender for the title, greatest TV drama.

I was tempted to title this “See the Great Richard Basehart…,” but thought better of it. The hyperbole would have undermined the claim.

Last month the actor Forest Whitaker was stopped in a Manhattan delicatessen by an employee. Whitaker is one of the pre-eminent actors of his generation, with a diverse and celebrated catalog ranging from “The Great Debaters” to “The Crying Game” to “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.”

If Whitaker were as famous as Coates claimed, the entire, 33-word second sentence would have been unnecessary.

Saturday, May 27, 2017

TCM's Memorial Weekend Film Noir is Journey into Fear (1942), at 10 a.m. ET on Sunday, May 28.

Joseph Cotten plays an American ballistics expert leaving Turkey for the USA, along with his wife (Ruth Warrick). A Turkish police chief (Orson Welles) places Cotten on a steamship, without him saying goodbye to his wife. Naturally, there are plenty of Nazi spies and other characters on the ship.

Orson Welles and Cotten wrote the screenplay. And Welles supposedly "co-directed" with Norman Foster.

The Hook (1963) stars Kirk Douglas. A group of American soldiers has to decide whether to kill a POW.

One Minute to Zero (1952) stars Robert Mitchum as a colonel who finds "romance and danger."

The Rack (1956) is one of Paul Newman's first big roles. He plays an American officer who supposedly "turned traitor" in the Communist prison camps. This was a big theme in the 1950's.

Men in War (1957) has Robert Ryan and Aldo Ray, who portrayed the tough NCO so well. Ryan plays a platoon commander trying to keep his men alive, a more sympathetic character than Ryan usually played. Ray's character isn't likable, but his combat instincts save the outfit again and again. Vic Morrow plays a weak soldier, the opposite of his characterization in the later Combat TV show.

The Steel Helmet (1951) was directed by WW II combat veteran Sam Fuller. It has the themes Fuller always liked, better than The Big Red One in my opinion. Gene Evans is excellent as a cynical WW II veteran NCO.

The Rack, Men in War, and The Steel Helmet are the best of the group. The last one is considered one of the best war films of all time, but I think Fuller's Fixed Bayonets (another Korean War film) is as good or better. Evans played the sergeant again with Richard Basehart as the lead.

Friday, May 26, 2017

By Nicholas Stix
Grammatical corrections made at 6:04 p.m., on Sunday, June 11, 2017.

On Wednesday, May 24, I saw a CNN roundtable of activists doing the usual—trashing President Trump.

Jim Sciutto showed a clip of Sen. Al Franken asking witness Sen. Jeff Sessions if the latter had had any contact with the Russians, and Sessions saying no.

In an attempt to insinuate that Sessions had perjured himself, Sciutto then pointed out that Sessions had indeed met with the Russians during the transition.

What Sciutto didn’t say was that Jeff Sessions had not met with the Russians in his capacity as a member of the Trump team, which was the point of Franken’s question, and that he had only met with the Russians in his function as U.S. senator at the behest of then-President Barack “Obama.”

The fake news story, whereby Sessions had “perjured” himself had been debunked months ago, yet Sciutto hoped either that CNN viewers were too lazy to know, had forgotten, or didn’t care about the truth.

It’s bad enough promoting a hoax, but I don’t know quite what to call someone who revives a hoax.

This is Jim Sciutto’s first Duranty-Blair Award for Journalistic Infamy, but something tells me it won’t be his last. His CNN colleagues Symone Sanders, Don Lemon, and Kate Bolduan preceded him in perfidy.

The Duranty-Blair Award recognizes those journalists whose work embodies the spirit of Walter Duranty and Jayson Blair, two of the most notorious journalists in the history of the Fourth Estate. It is no accident that both men worked for the New York Times.

Walter Duranty wrote a series of early 1930s dispatches from the Soviet Union, where he was Times Moscow bureau chief, in which he lied about the Ukrainian Holocaust, in which Stalin deliberately starved millions of Kulaks (farmers) to death, through a man-made famine. Instead of reporting the truth, Duranty reported that the peasants were happy and well-fed, and was rewarded for his lies with a Pulitzer Prize.

Jayson Blair (here, here, and here) was an early 2000s black affirmative action hire, who alternately plagiarized reporters at other newspapers, and fabricated articles out of whole cloth, all for stories set hundreds and even thousands of miles away, while he sat in New York City cafés.

In 2004, CBS News producer Mary Mapes sought to win the presidential election for socialist Democrat challenger, Sen. John Kerry, by perpetrating a hoax, various dubbed “Memogate” and “Rathergate,” using forged Texas Air Force National Guard documents, provided by Bush-hating former reserve officer Bill Burkett, charging future president George W. Bush with going AWOL during the Vietnam War.

In 2013, Peter Berger, of The American Interest, was recognized for his support of, and cover-up of the ongoing genocide against South African whites.

In 2014, AP reporter Tom Hays won for his 2004 “Boosgate” hoax. In his contribution to the John Kerry for President campaign, Hays had fabricated an incident out of whole cloth, in which Republican voters at a Bush re-election rally “booed” news from President Bush II, of President Clinton’s illness.

In September 2016, New York Times operative Farhad Manjoo became a Duranty-Blair laureate, in recognition of his perfidy, as an unofficial Hillary Clinton operative, in calling on Google to censor stories which covered Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s health problems, and which raised questions about her physical fitness for the highest office in the land.

Finally, in March 2017, the New York Times’ Francis X. Clines was recognized for his yeoman work back in 2001, when he applied propagandistic alchemy, in order to transform the 2001, Cincinnati riot from an orgy of violent black racism against whites into a non-violent exercise in righteous black indignation.

Pedro Hernandez was retried and convicted in February 2017. A month ago, he was sentenced to “25 years to Life” for the murder of Etan Patz.

For a long time, one Jose Ramos was thought to be Etan Patz's killer. Ramos was a known pedophile who was convicted in Pennsylvania in 1991 for child molestation in that state. He served a 20-year sentence, but is back in prison for not reporting as a sex offender.

Oddly, Hernandez's trial and conviction for what was a high profile murder in its time didn't get much national publicity.

About Me

I am a dissident journalist, whose work has been published in dozens of daily newspapers, magazines, and journals in English, German, and Swedish, under my own name and many pseudonyms. While living in internal exile in New York, where I am whitelisted, I maintain NSU/The Wyatt Earp Journalism Bureau and some eight other blogs (some are distinctive but occasional venues, while others are mirrors), and also write for stout-hearted men such as Peter Brimelow and Jared Taylor. Please hit the “Donate” button on your way out. Thanks, in advance.
Follow my tweets at @NicholasStix.

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